And it may not be necessary at all. Yet nobody is objecting to the Delta Water Supply Project, which was ceremoniously started up yesterday.

The city built the $60 million Goodwin Tunnel and canals to bring 75,000 acre feet of water a year from New Melones. The DWSP costs four times that much and brings 33,000 acre feet a year.

It is true that evolving federal regulations make the Goodwin water less reliable. But the Delta is evolving too, what with the state hell-bent on building a canal. The Delta we’ve stuck our straw in may be a very different place, with very different water, long before the bonds that financed the DWSP are paid off.

I raised these concerns in 2009. Then then-head of Municipal Utilities pounded his fist on the table and said the project was a go. The city may go bankrupt over a $26 million projected deficit in fiscal 2012-13. Yet it just cranked up a capital project that cost almost 10 times that amount.

The council on Tuesday will vote to authorize City Manager Bob Deis to declare Chapter 9 if he can’t exact sufficient concessions from creditiors in mediation. 

The city is preparing with its rhetoric, too. Dissenting councilman Dale Fritchen may think the city can tighten its belt enough to avoid bankruptcy, but the official line from City Hall is it cannot be done.

“The City Council has addressed $90 million in deficits over the last 3 years and is faced with a $26 million deficit in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2012,” a city press release says. “The Council believes that any further service cuts will endanger the health and safety of the community.”

It’s pretty simple. All things being equal, mediation ends June 25, and the city becomes insolvent on July 1. Only 17 working days separate the city from the historic decision.

All seven are former Stockton Police officers.

Other police have relocated to the Redding Police Department, recruited by Chief Robert Paoletti, a former Stockton PD Captain, to Lodi, recruited by Chief Mark Helms, former Assistant Chief of Stockton PD, and one offcer who was on the sergeant’s list to be promoted, but went to UC Berkeley.

Stockton had to cut almost 100 police officers when the recession drastically reduced revenue to city coffers. Even more officers chose to leave to avoid cuts to their pay and benefits.

Go figure. To have a high school named after you is a greater honor. Also, Huerta Elementary is on the south side, while Chavez school is on the northside, which could imply greater acceptance from what used to be called the “dominant culture.”

But Huerta is the Stocktonian. Sexism? A cult of personality around Chavez? 

Not a big deal. But if I were naming things around here, Huerta wold have a park, high school or big street named after her. She is every bit as committed and courageous as Chavez was. And one of Stockton’s brightest lights.

Add Big Pharma, AT&T and … Disney?

Eliabeth Wong’s pedicab sports a campaign sign.

Several Stockton seniors — foes of Simpson’s proposals, and possibly the “greedy geezers” he aimed his screed at, since he alludes to a leaflet, and they were leafleting – attended that event. One forwarded me the letter.

Read Simpson’s prickly letter.

The senior who forwarded it was scandalized. “I think it is vile!” he proclaimed.

“And the general fund deficit is maybe 0.3% of the City economy,” said Jeff Michael of UOP’s Business Forecasting Center. 

“From that perspective it looks small,” Michael added. “but is important to understand that economies are interconnected systems, not isolated components. And the services that are provided by the General Fund are truly public services that touch everyone and every business at some level.”

On the face of it, it seems almost absurd. Here’s a Princeton Phi Beta Kappa, pledging to dig in his heels over tax increases, something the dumbest guy in the room can do.

But Gill’s spokesman, Colin Hunter, says the no-tax pledge doesn’t preclude compromise.  

“In fact, there is a workable model for tax reform that is consistent to the STR pledge: the 1986 tax reform,” Hunter argued.

“It was bipartisan, it lowered rates, and it was revenue neutral. So that’s the kind of reform that Ricky’s looking at. Ricky supports reforming the tax code, making it fairer, making it simpler, but doing so in a way that is revenue neutral.”

An intelligent answer. Though if one has to look back as far as 1986 to find an example of bipartisan and revenue neutral tax reform, it suggests they are rare birds.

“We fundamentally don’t have a revenue problem in the country,” Hunter said, lapsing into familiar rhetoric. “We have a spending problem. And it’s structural and we need to fix that.”

I don’t disagree with this last sentiment.

An L.A. Times story about the notorious city of Bell suggests why: because some auditors do little more than rubber stamp city books. What a sweet life: do a cursory examination of a city’s books, sign off on them, take the six-figure paycheck, and leave work early. Come on fellas, it’s Happy Hour! 

It suggests fiscal laxity may be endemic to California cities.

City Manager Bob Deis proposed investigating Stockton’s past fiscal practices and possibly suing the outside auditors. The council shied away from an investigation.